OLYMPICS

OLYMPICS; Senator Hints of Sharing Evidence in Steroid Case

By FORD FESSENDEN

Published: May 6, 2004

WASHINGTON, May 5—
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, suggested on Wednesday that he might share with American Olympic and anti-doping officials evidence developed by federal prosecutors about elite athletes' dealings with a laboratory that is at the center of a steroids scandal.

McCain, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, made his remarks after a closed-door hearing of the committee with officials of the United States Olympic Committee and the United States Anti-Doping Agency. The Olympic officials have been pressing the Commerce Committee for access to evidence about athletes' interactions with the California laboratory, which is known as Balco.

Before proceeding, McCain said, he wanted to confer with the Commerce Committee's ranking Democrat, Senator Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina.

The Commerce Committee received evidence last week from the Justice Department on its 18-month investigation of Balco, or the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. McCain had subpoenaed the records, saying he wanted to know before American athletes went to compete in the Athens Olympics in August whether any athletes had used banned performance-enhancing drugs. Four people have been indicted in the Balco case on charges of illegally distributing steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to elite professional athletes in several sports, including track and field.

Although no American athlete has ever been banned from competition in Olympic sports without having failed a drug test, officials with the United States Anti-Doping Agency have said they would take action if there was compelling evidence against any Olympic athletes. The few court documents in the Balco case that have been made public are filled with references to Olympic athletes' dealings with Balco, but the athletes' names were redacted.

The private hearing on Wednesday came on the heels of an official request from the United States Olympic Committee for the unredacted files and other evidence in the case. In a letter to McCain last Friday, William C. Martin, acting president of the United States Olympic Committee, asked for immediate access to the evidence developed by federal prosecutors, so the anti-doping agency would have enough time to take action before the trials for the Olympic track and field team on July 9.

''We would ask the committee to consider taking, as soon as possible, appropriate steps to ensure that sunlight is cast on this process so that athletes who are guilty can be dealt with and athletes who are innocent, but who have been the subject of speculation and conjecture, can clear their names and focus on training for the games,'' Martin wrote.

Martin declined to comment after the hearing, as did Terry Madden, the head of the anti-doping agency, and Don Catlin, a drug-testing expert at U.C.L.A., who also participated.

The information being considered for sharing apparently includes many pages of evidence, including copies of e-mail messages, bank records, wiretaps and blood tests that were gathered by investigators for the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies.

The evidence provided to the Commerce Committee did not include grand jury testimony, McCain said. ''We do not have any grand jury transcripts, no, we do not,'' McCain said. ''Nor have we requested them.''

Last fall, a federal grand jury called dozens of athletes to testify after investigators confiscated detailed records from Balco's offices. There has been much speculation about whether athletes admitted to having used performance-enhancing drugs in their testimony before the grand jury, which by law is secret. In the view of many legal experts, grand jury testimony cannot be revealed even to Congress.

A spokesman for the Senate Commerce Committee said any decision to turn over the subpoenaed documents would require the unanimous consent of the Senate, which is routinely granted at the request of individual senators. The Olympic sprint champion Marion Jones testified before the grand jury in San Francisco, as did her boyfriend, the sprinter Tim Montgomery. Other top Olympic athletes also made appearances, as did many professional baseball and football players. Jones has said she would welcome the release of the evidence, because she said it will show that she did nothing wrong.

Photo: Senator John McCain has suggested giving evidence in the Balco steroids case to Olympic officials. (Photo by Getty Images)